Moms, Margarine is NOT Good for You or Your Kids

I grew up eating the leading margarine brand in the Philippines, called Magnolia Star Margarine. I used to melt a good amount of it on white steamed rice, the staple food in most Asian countries. The company’s advertisements usually involved and still involve parents encouraging their children to eat it with their food.

In the commercial below, the first part of the narration comes from the mom’s thoughts heard out loud by the audience. She says things like:

“For my star player!” (referring to the son)

“So that my beauty queen grows taller!” (referring to the daughter)

The last part of the screen says iba na ang matangkad, which means “It makes a difference to be tall.” This product’s tagline is pinipili ng mapiling ina, meaning “chosen by the pickiest of moms.”

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/D-iDJwFpvuc?rel=0

Below, you will find the label for Star Margarine. The first ingredient (coconut oil), although refined, I think we can all agree is good. The second ingredient is “hydrogenated palm oil.” I cannot read the other ingredients after salt because of the low quality of the scanned image, but the second ingredient should be enough for you (or moms) to not want to eat this. To tell you the truth, I actually expected to see the more common “bad” oils—vegetable oil, soybean oil, or canola oil—first on the ingredient list, because most margarine in the U.S. includes one or more. I have a strong suspicion it’s because coconut oil is so abundant and cheap in the Philippines, not because of its health benefits. Palm oil, also abundant on islands, really isn’t that bad either, but still, the hydrogenation makes it one of those “plastic” trans fats. And I’m assuming the rest of the list (if we could read it) probably included one of the “bad” oils.

Even the popularly recognized Mayo Clinic had this to say about trans fat:

“Scientists aren’t sure exactly why, but the addition of hydrogen to oil increases your cholesterol more than do other types of fats. It’s thought that adding hydrogen to oil makes the oil more difficult to digest, and your body recognizes trans fats as saturated fats.”

Even though this product and many others claim not to have trans fat, they may contain them anyway and oftentimes don’t need to be labeled as having it if it’s under a certain amount. Small amounts, though, especially of the more harmful types from processed food, can build up inside the body. Now, this is all changing slowly but surely in the U.S., but in developing countries like the Philippines, we can almost count on their going through delayed regulations (like sweatshops in China), growing pains, and kinks in their development due to the eagerness and folly of a burgeoning prominent free market society. It is hard to tell what will happen even in the U.S. when it comes to the regulation of toxic food, but a good place to look is France. I’m sure you’ve heard about the horrific truth addressed in Vanishing of the Bees. In that documentary, we find out that France had the same problem in the ’90s and stopped using systemic pesticides. Once again, they seem to always be one step ahead.

If mothers only knew that this stuff was toxic and basically the same as plastic, they wouldn’t dare have it near their kids! I was a chubby, sickly kid. A drop of rain on my head gave me a cold, and I ate this stuff (along with the other junk I liked) all the time. It was only when I lived with my grandmother for a few months that I actually seemed to grow taller at a significant rate. Interestingly enough, she used real animal fat to cook my food.

The beef tallow she fed me was probably corn fed and not grass fed, which is still not good, but it is a lot better for the body than margarine. I was still chubby, but I really believe that was because I didn’t stop eating everything else the other kids and I ate—namely candy, chocolate, dessert, chips, etc.

This commercial from Youtube isn’t from when I was a child in the ’90s. I was trying to find the same one that made me really want Star Margarine on my rice, but this one is good enough. It shows that nothing much has changed with this product and the majority of the public’s opinion over margarine vs. butter.

There are some signs of change, however. I’m relieved to see that non-alternative health blogs like the Daily Mail have written about how butter is actually good for you, and margarine, especially with hydrogenated oils, is essentially “lethal” and much worse for you. They haven’t realized however that you can eat a lot of butter, and you don’t have to eat it in moderation, as they say towards the end of the article. My husband and I go through about a whole stick (two lengthwise sticks combined) or more in one day, and that’s with holding back a bit! We are both in excellent shape, without needing to be athletes or a bodybuilders.

I know the evidence may be anecdotal, but take it from two people who’ve suffered from broken childhood (and a lot of Rob’s adulthood) metabolism (we both have been at least 30 lbs. overweight at one or more times in our lives). So for us, we’ve had proof enough that nearly unlimited amounts of butter categorically do not make you fat. On top of that, there’s this guy, who went on a 4500-calorie-a-day diet of mostly butter and as little carbs as he could without giving himself adrenal fatigue. He ended up growing a six-pack with very little exercise. Add to that countless other testimonies of people who have had great results with a diet high in saturated fat, and you’ve got something to think about.

I am glad that butter is better for our bodies, aren’t you? Margarine doesn’t come close to the amazing taste of butter on your food anyway. It’s one of the few things, if you’re not used to healthy eating, that actually tastes better than the unnatural version!